Working with Internal Monologue--When Narrators Think, Remember, or Talk with Themselves on the Page

Internal monologue can be one of those complicated craft decisions for fiction and memoir writers. When to use it well, when it's not needed, what style it uses to properly show itself on the page.

Not hard to recognize: most stories have brief moments when the narrator--yourself in memoir, the point-of-view character in fiction--pauses to reflect.

They think, remember, or talk with themselves on the page, but it's all happening inside their heads, not aloud. So it doesn't fall under the regular craft guidelines that dialogue relies on.

In fact, it's a tricky beast with constantly changing rules to use it properly.

A writer emailed me this week about this dilemma: "It used to be writers tagged it with ’she thought.’ Or they put it in italics. Now I see more writers just incorporating it without tags or italics. Sometimes the main action is in past tense and the internal dialog is in present." She wanted to get updated on current usage and style guidelines.

I wanted to back up a bit and actually define interior monologue as a conversation a character is having with themselves, internally. Some writers call it internal dialogue. Or thought tags. But whatever you call it, it's happening inside And the big question is: How much is it really needed?

As an editor, I have strong opinions about interior monologue. I've seen it overused. Mostly that happens when the writer is unsure whether her point has come across via action and dialogue. She wants to drive home the meaning by having the character map it out for us internally. Bad move, because readers are super smart and most IM is completely superfluous, in my opinion--or worse, weighs down the pace unnecessarily. IM feels like a pause in the action, the forward momentum, which it is.

Many writers, including myself, rely on interior monologue a lot in early drafts. It's much easier to have your character think something that do the work to show it in actual scene. Interior monologue classifies as "telling" in the reader's mind. It's distant, emotionally, unless it's integrated into an active scene that demonstrates the emotion.

In early drafts, use IM to your heart's content. But be sure to come back in revision and question whether you're avoiding the work of scene-writing, and ask yourself why.

If it's just laziness or uncertainty, which it usually is in my case in those first attempts, consider it a legit placeholder that will need to be reworked.

Or are you a writer who doesn't trust your reader enough, so you overwrite: you already have a good scene but you add the same point as IM just to make sure the reader gets it.

As said above, that puts your reader off. They smell distrust a mile away. Another reason to be ruthless as you comb through, weeding out unnecessary interior monologue.

I do find a balance is needed. Enough internals (which IM is) to keep us apprised of the character's inner state, but only if it's clearly not already shown by the scene.

A final point: IM sneaks out in two versions: direct and indirect. I can't believe I said that, she thought. That's direct. She couldn't believe she'd thought that. That's indirect.

As my reader's question points out, it was correct style to put the direct IM in italics, to make it look like dialogue. The indirect IM is just blended into the narrative.

But the modern trend is moving towards removing italics from both. You'll find some editors agree, some don't. But mine have usually recommended taking out the italics.

So the direct IM would read: I can't believe I said that, she thought.

This week, for your writing exercise, consider combing through a chapter of your manuscript draft for IM. If you find some, rewrite as scene. Is it more potent? Is it better as IM?